Engineering Solution

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Mighty Jacksparrow is an Earth-based sub-intergalactic blogger who enjoys writing and in the same time entertaining his ever-amusing will-kill-to-read fans with sensationally hilarious and at times dramatic musings. This blog offers endless ideas and results; they might be charming most of the times but could be offending in some others. Therefore, it is always noble to remind that if you enjoy the pieces, carry on reading, but if they upset you, do quietly leave like the evening breeze and not like exploding diarrhea, which exactly what you will look like if you ever lose it on me. Enjoy! :D

Friday, May 29, 2009

It is within my concern to inform you that while the world rotates on its axis and I having the option to stay static on my chair looking blindly into the flat LCD monitor for the rest of the weekend to come, I will be going back to my hometown sometime in the evening tomorrow due to imminent personal errands from which I never want to procrastinate for anytime longer than now.

Therefore I would like to inform that even though the world is spider-webbed with internet accesses these days from any end, I may not be able to access my blog for a new 'what's up' for as explained schedule ahead of me.

So please allow me to be away for a while until the day I return to fascinate and entertain you with my more and more neverending tales, which probably at any day sometime next week.

Have a good weekend then, and do take care, all of you. You can still leave comments in any post you prefer. and as soon as I have my hands into the ravaging claws of the world wide web, I will approve them with replies.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

There will always be days where you feel totally in disagreement with things that happen to you. And this lead to you blaming things and losing your temper, as the disagreement builds adequately over time, just enough to snap you into being some sort of Sergeant McCoy under pressure.

Today, it has been 19 days since I placed an order for a few things from a seller via an established business & trading website, and transferred an amount of three digits worth of Malaysia Ringgit into his account.

And then he disappeared. My emails and SMS were not replied, and his phone was off the whole time. There are other 2 persons who actually are facing this same problem, and we are all very, very, very pissed.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Upon receiving my first Polo shirt a long time before, I have fell in love with the design and the lifestyle Polo has to offer.

I had my first Polo when I was a kid, and somehow I lost track of the shirt sometime between prepubescent period to date. I do not actually remember what I felt when I first wore that black shirt with tiny pony design embroidered in red on the left chest part, provided that I was still a small kid that time ergo my appreciation towards designer labels was still undeveloped. But I loved that shirt very much for its Pony logo. I was a kid, and there's a horse on my chest; who won't fancy that?

The Jockey Sprint Pony Logo, synonym to every Polo Shirt.

Time passed by and I got myself a new Polo shirt, blue label series, sometime in August last year, a courtesy of a loved one. The shirt is light mocha in color and the embroidered Big Pony symbol is in dark blue. The shirt is fitted, which I find quite troubling in order to hide my somehow enlarging belly area, which forced me to cramp the lower abdomen muscles in such a way that it remains flat all the time every time I wear the shirt.

But the passion for Polo suddenly rose in me.

There are usually three types of Pony design they embroidered on Polo shirts, be it the Ralph Lauren's, Santa Barbara's or Polo Haus. They are the Single that usually comes in two sizes: small or big, Double Ponies or 'Dual' and Three Ponies or Triple (also referred to as 'Match' due to the imagery). These designs appear in single color but also in multicolor edition.

Single, Small Pony Classic Fit Polo

Single, Big Pony Classic Fit Polo

Dual Pony Classic Fit Polo, number 3

Triple/Match, single color

Triple/Match, multicolor

And then there is the number, usually comes in 1, 2 ,3 and 4 according to the role of the players in the field. Number One is the most offensive position on the field. Number Two has an important offensive role of either running through and scoring themselves, or passing to the number one and getting in behind them. Number Three is the tactical leader and must be a long powerful hitter to feed balls to Number Two and Number One as well as maintaining a solid defense. The best player on the team is usually the Number Three player. Number Four is the primary defense player and though they can move anywhere on the field, they often try to prevent scoring.

So if you see number thirteen on a Polo shirt, well, you know what it means.

I would love to own many of these flattering Polo shirts, but to date I am a little bit offensive to own these designs which I found fancy:

The Classic Match Polo, Multicolor

The Blackwatch Polo team edition, number 2

The Passport/Flag Slim Fit Polo, number 2

Other than those featured are the Hackett and Mercer No. IV rare collections.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

From my past writings, I am pretty sure many of my readers are aware about my likings towards trains.

How fascinating, very, these metallic caterpillars are. I personally love the sounds of the locomotive engines, the smell of diesel smoke they produces and of course the looks of them. These raging locomotives not only attract the passengers but also passers-by who happen to bump into them soon these powerful machines get themselves running on metal tracks.

I love trains. I spent hours sitting at a corner of either Ipoh Railway Station or much smaller station in Batu Gajah just to look at them slowing down to halt or just passing by.

In a way to appreciate these diesel-powered locomotives, I utilized my photography skill to capture these beasts in the form of digital photographic images. Do enjoy some of my best collections and feel free to comment.

Thanks!

Taken at the Old Railway Station, Kuala Lumpur, this mixed-goods line was bound for Ipoh, hauling containers and liquid-chemical tanks.

This 25-class locomotive had just finished its job for the day and was left to rest at one of the sidings in Ipoh station. The containers that framed the locomotive were Prai Sugar's.

The Express Senandung Langkawi, bound for Kuala Lumpur, was passing this hallway at night.

The latest collection in the series of diesel locomotives, the 29-class (or twenty-niner I call it) proves to be as powerful as it looks like. This loco was hauling empty Prai Sugar containers up North for refilling.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Why do I enjoy writing hell of multiple pages of papers? Just for the fun of it? Maybe.

I do enjoy writing so much. I write and i write and i write. But i do not write blindly, must i know what i am writing in the first place before actually putting the tip of the pen onto those blank sheets and create the harmony.

I can always say that some people do enjoy my writings, and some can get really offended with them too. Some says my words sweets up the bitter of their sorrows, while some says I am even meaner than every beast in this world. Blunt spears strike through their hearts, subjected only from the tip of a pen.

And here goes Min, or Milia Yasmin. Maybe some of you have already heard of her, but some may have not. Milia Yasmin is a character of a novel i used to write in 2005 to 2007.

I wanted to talk about this pretty young girl, Syarifah Milia Yasmin Syed Mustaffa since long ago. When the first episode actually came up, many came to me and ask: So who is this Milia Yasmin? Another sceptical love episode of your life? A woman you admire?

But i can never answer those questions. Some took it wrong that I'm just being greedy, without even knowing that some things are better left unsaid.

They said I gave life to Milia Yasmin. The character was so alive that, everyone believes that she was once alive. Well, wasn't she? Or is it that she is only my psycho-somatic imagination? I cannot answer that, i told them, and they swept away.

Milia Yasmin changed me a lot. She was the one who said it was okay to breath again. She told me to be strong against the incoming stream. She told me to be brave to stand up again. She told me that it is okay to live here in His world. She said no matter what people say about me, just let them be and i've gotta move on.

She said it was okay for me to smile again.

"Smile at the stars, and they will always smile back at you." And then she left. Just like that.

Milia Yasmin left me with a lot of doubts. A lot of questions, none of them has ever been answered till now. She left me fallen on my very own ground. But she left me in harmony, plentiful of peace and love, nourishing my dark life with tears from heaven.

Owh i have gone through a great life. Many says i live a useless life, but I say i have a great one indeed. I have done many things wrong, but i never give up upon those mistakes. I have felt the joy and the tears of life. I have tasted the rosy love and the bitter side of hatred. I have gained and lost many friends, as they come and go. I have been wronged over and over, for why only God knows. But I am proud of my life. Regardless of what people say about me, I am still standing here on my very ground, putting my strength against the current of devastating life.

And so, when every time life shows its fangs to me, i will just sit down and think again about it. Di mana silapnya? Where is the mistake? And i will always find one. And when I was pushed down into the ground without mercy, i can always find the strength to push back by just sitting down and think about everything. And when i do feel lonely, i will always take a look at the sky and smile with a small sigh, and i will feel the proud i have for my own life.

In the lead towards the virtually expressive and yet to be understood fully quantum physics, men have created many devices in order to test theories in experiments, in order to find answer to most of their doubts in mind about how this universe works from the simplest form of matters and particles.

So these bunch of 10,000 engineers and scientists from over a hundred countries gathered around and plan for this supersize energy accelerator, and they named it The Large Hadron Collider. With 27 km in circumference under Geneva's soil, this underground thing sure is very big.

Apparently the UFO parking plan was rejected by the JPJ.

Probably the largest washing machine motor ever created by men.

The large Hadron Collider is a massive particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles in order to study the classic high-energy physics. Two beams of subatomic particles protons or lead ions will travel in opposite directions colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Some people are afraid that it will create strange matter which turns everything it touches into strange matter meaning everything, miniature big bangs.

Bang!

Some of the top physicists expressed their concerns on what the collider may produce, which in their believes the collider may just turn matter into antimatter or create out-of-a-sudden state-of-the-art supermassive blackholes where we all are going to be sucked into and compressed into a state of form so dense that the dying part must be interesting to study, or worst create a godlike explosion due to the high-energy collision of particles, few hundred times than that of a plutonium bomb. Or maybe create a few numbers of parallel universe that mirrors the exact earth somewhere in the other part of space, only that in that universe your life somewhat is more fortunate, or the alternate. Or maybe, due to the energy it creates,at such a superhigh speed, we'll eventually travel back to time. Grandma's wedding will be attendable once again. But I believe the subatomic particles collision that leads to explosion is somehow very, very disturbing upon reading up the facts and studies about how much energy can be gathered from such small elemental particles.

In the search for answers, them mad scientists turn earth into sun. Hilarious.

Picture this: the energy inside your pasar-malam wristwatch is ample enough to at least destroy Southeast Asia, if all of it is used at 100% efficiency and at amplified course. So don't underrate small particles, son. They're just don't behave like the way they look.

The advantage of gasification is that using the syngas is potentially more efficient than direct combustion of the original fuel because it can be combusted at higher temperatures or even in fuel cells, so that the thermodynamic upper limit to the efficiency defined by Carnot's rule is higher or not applicable. Syngas may be burned directly in internal combustion engines, used to produce methanol and hydrogen, or converted via the Fischer-Tropsch process into synthetic fuel. Gasification can also begin with materials that are not otherwise useful fuels, such as biomass or organic waste. In addition, the high-temperature combustion refines out corrosive ash elements such as chloride and potassium, allowing clean gas production from otherwise problematic fuels.

Source: Wikipedia.org

So basically I am up to producing synthesis gas, a combination of largely hydrogen and carbon monoxide so that I can supply them into compression or spark ignition internal combustion engine to power up turbine to generate electricity, or simply run a car.

Run a car, yes. We can run a car using only product gases from burning biomass. No petrol at all.

Wicked.

* * *

It has been almost a year I have been doing literature review. And it is killing me. Thanks to my FYP student, Mr PH, he designed and developed a small scale gasifier for us to play with. And since he's graduating, I am taking over his gasifier for my own benefits. Hahahaha. Don't worry PH, I will put your name in my latest journal. Happy or not?

So let's take a look at some pictures here:

This is the amateur-gasifier that I have been using. Made from stainless steel and mild steel. Basically the whole thing can be dismantled into smaller parts.

This is the inside of the hopper down to the combustion chamber. The lining is made out of portland cement to insulate internal heat and keep the reactor temperature stable.So you put all your biomass in here and start the fire from down there at the grate.

For the biomass, I'm using only these sticks and barks. And something special inside that blue box. The signage might gives out some clues. The biomass has to be all dried up properly.

So now lets start the fire. I remove the top hopper and only leave the combustion chamber. I opened the green-handled valve to allow air to flow into the chamber and help combustion.

Then I attach the top hopper to the combustion chamber once the fire inside the chamber is hot strong enough to maintain its state. That smoke coming out is because there is not enough air to promote complete combustion inside the chamber.

Then I put the biomass into the hopper and I cut the air supply into the gasifier by closing the valve at the pipe down there. Now even less air, more smoke is coming out. The smoke is mainly steam from wet biomass.

Then I close the top hatch opening with the lid that has that pipe attached to it. Even less air, and now the biomass inside the chamber is burning in incomplete combustion.

Then I attach the cyclone humidity trap to literally 'catch' the steam and let it condenses into water droplets.

There. Can see that one small water droplet or not? This is what we call condensates or black wine. Dangerous solution, this is.

Then I simply open the top lid and see what's going on inside. The fire is damn fierce inside there. Notice that bluish to purplish color of fire? That indicates the presence of gas.

Suddenly the fire gets to be so fierce so I need to close the lid and limit the air flowing into the gasifier again. So I put another type of block that I call the top flare point.

...and tadaaaa..!!! Eureka! The gas burns so cleanly that there is no smoke at all. It's like your stove at home, burning natural gas as clean as possible. Look at the beautiful blue flame. It's orgasmic, man!

But at every start of invention there should be a lot of obstacles...for me is the tar production control.

The byproduct of the gasification can be in the type of tarry condensate. Look at the thick tar spots there. Smelly, in a very weird way that it is alluring. The tar is made due to the breaking of aromatic carbon rings at high temperature, hence the weird but somehow pleasant smell.

Black wine condensates collection. You distill this thing and get concentrated aromatic oil then convert it into perfume.

The tar collection on the pipe that goes inside the chamber.

Notice the color difference between the two pipes separated with the lid?

* * *

What important is that, I managed to produce the gas. A few tweaks here and there, I would be able to produce more gas to generate cleaner flame for the better earth. Chewah~